Arik Air on Sunday left passengers on the ground after three aircraft in the airline’s fleet developed technical problems and were grounded.
The development led to confusion at the Port Harcourt airport yesterday when the airline could not airlift passengers scheduled to travel to Abuja because it could not to provide aircraft for the service.
It was gathered that two flights were scheduled for Abuja from Port Harcourt but after passengers had waited for several hours, Arik Air could only deploy one aircraft to airlift them.
As at 7:49 p.m. boarding was completed on the Boeing B737 aircraft but there were many passengers that could not be taken by the flight.
The passengers who were left on ground started protesting the failure of the airline to airlift them to their destination.
Newsheadline247 understands that since Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) took over the management of the airline, it has pruned its services, so what happened was not due to overbooking.
A source from the airline told THISDAY NG that, “We don’t bite more than we can chew so this kind of thing has never happened to us in a long time.
“We don’t bite more than we can chew so this kind of thing has never happened to us in a long time.
“When our three aircraft were declared not airworthy and went out of service, we have to use the remaining aircraft to meet our schedule for the day.
“This means that we have to combine flights. Delay became inevitable but we wanted to ensure that we satisfied everyone,” the airline source said.
The passengers in protest complained that the airline did not inform them of the development until it became very late.
